Jeokdang 赤糖 (Seoul, SOUTH KOREA) ★★★☆☆

After dropping mom and little nugget off at our hotel, Jelloman and I went on our separate journey for the remainder of the night. While she took off for her shopping spree at her favorite Dongdaemun malls, I had my slow and deliberate walk to Namdaemun-ro 9-gil. My destination, a small but intimate coffee shop just off Seoul Plaza by the name of Jeokdang 赤糖 (적당).

Located in the Jung-gu neighborhood just a stone's throw from City Hall and Euljiro 1(il)-ga station, Jeokdang offers a variety of coffee and tea as well as yang-gaeng (양갱), a special sweet jelly made with agar agar, sweetener among other ingredients. These delicate sweet jellies come in different flavors including chestnut, green tea, milk tea, hazelnut, chocolate, apple, orange and raspberry, each with a different filling in the middle. 

Inspired by a traditional Japanese zen garden, the interior décor of this popular coffee shop boasts the design of a lush secret garden and "pavilion", which immediately caught my eyes during my research for this trip.

Their signature sweet jellies were on full display in this beautiful zen-style display counter.

I managed to get a hold of these just before their last-order time.

Iced milk tea (7,000 won) – At 9pm, it was a bit late to have another coffee so I decided to check out their iced milk tea instead. I noticed during my frequent visits to Seoul that Seoulists are very good with their royal milk tea and they have a really good one here as well. The tea flavor was light (a good thing at this late hour) but it was pretty milky. Not bad.

Chestnut sweet jelly (2,800 won) – I asked my server to recommend a flavor of yang-gaeng for me and he wasted no time bringing up this chestnut sweet jelly. Said it was easily their best seller.

This was less wobbly than I expected from a jelly and the fact that there was a whole confit chestnut in the middle caught me by surprise.

Monaca (3,500 won) – Another popular dessert at Jeokdang is their Japanese monaka, an ice-cream sandwich filled with vanilla ice-cream. Yeah, I could really use something frosty to cool myself off after such a long walk from our hotel.

Jeokdang is supposed to be a red bean lover's dream thanks to their red bean centric menu (red bean tea, red bean latte, red bean bread, red bean rice cake etc. you get the idea) but since I am not a huge fan, I didn't try to push the envelope on this occasion.

Food Rating: 5.8/10

Price: ₩₩₩

Address: 1/F, 29 Eulji-ro, Jung-gu, Seoul, South Korea

Closest Metro Station: Euljiro 1(il)-ga

Tel: +82 0507-1312-8928

Opening Hours: 10:00am - 9:30pm (Last order: 9:00pm) daily